posted
Voyager and Enterprise had their faults but were all in the same conceptual wheelhouse as what had come before. Despite the occasional and oft-noted abject failures, the episodes were intended to show the same universe as and maintain continuity with the rest.
Discovery is explicitly including elements of a different universe . . . it'd be like including Intendant Kira and Smiley on Voyager without explanation. That makes it a different universe, too.
To borrow an analogy I have used elsewhere, if you have Tuvok and Neelix and start deleting and rewriting elements in Tuvok's character with Neelix, you don't have the same old Tuvok . . . you have Tuvix.
Tuvix may or may not be better than Tuvok, and he may be enjoyable as a character, but he's not Tuvok and we mustn't pretend otherwise.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Discovery is explicitly including elements of a different universe
Is it, though? Can you point to anything that clearly comes from another universe, or reality - apart from lens flares, anyway? Isn't it fairer to say it is including elements not previously seen in this universe? And ones that might at face value seem incongruous, but can in fact be put down to simple diversity?
posted
It is impossible to prove a negative, the way that was asked. I could make a show called "Star Trek" that used dagger-shaped ships with big honkin' engine bells on the back and lots of pew-pew barrelled laser guns and a crew in white plastic, and leave fans to rationalize it in assorted ways, including as always-just-off-camera stylistic diversity.
That said, the visual elements from the trailer referenced already… strange uniforms inconsistent to those seen in the era, weird ships with windowed underbridges, completely dissimilar computer interfaces, different equipment, and so on all combine for my point. It would be akin to Sisko's Defiant showing up in Battlestar Galactica, uniforms and all, and being presented as a normal Colonial force without some serious explaining.
Is it possible these things all existed simultaneously with a Pike-era Starfleet? One can hardly say no. But is it likely or reasonable?
I'll leave that to you, as I assume it is clear where I come down on that.
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posted
Well, that's fair enough. That's your opinion and you are of course entitled to it. It just sounded like you were highlighting elements that only could have come from the Kelvinverse.
posted
Shatner had some choice words yesterday for everyone who condemns the show long before launch:
quote:I just love how frazzled some of you get about canon. It’s a show and they are doing a prequel to something that was made 50 years ago. Star Trek was always more about the stories and messaging than the look. If they screw that up; roast em alive and kick em in the you know what! If they don’t; then enjoy it. Kirk out!
quote:I recall tales of castmates of yours who were very particular about pushing the same button for the same action each time. You yourself may have done so with the little buttons, knobs, and switches on the armrest, just as surely as you learned a bit of how to use police gear so TJ Hooker wouldn't look absurd by fiddling with air conditioning controls to call 10-4 on the radio. It was those very sorts of details that helped provide the sense of a 'reality' to that "far off, distant time", making it more than a mere TV show, but a subject of intense discussion, tech manuals, and so on. By getting rid of that, many feel we're losing something.
Regarding canon, many forget that the end product is one created by many chefs. The stories and actors are important, of course, but so is the rest of the vision as created by the hard labor of set designers, propmasters, model-makers, FX artists, et cetera. "Star Trek" can no more abandon their work wholesale and remain "Star Trek" than it could keep their work and abandon the "stories and messaging".
Either way, it ends up something else.
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posted
Don't know who you are quoting (god I hope it wasn't yourself), but they're wrong. Roddenberry's vision has been misquoted and misconstrued many times, for sure, but one thing I can say for sure his goal was not is "aesthetic arrest". He himself had a hand in TNG, and it had moved on from TOS.
Sentimentality and nostalgia has diminishing returns, and should be used in as small doses as possible that will still make the narrative smooth.
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Of course it had moved on from TOS. So, too, had Roddenberry in several respects. The real-world time between the two was matched by the time in the universe separating them. Differences were to be expected in both cases.
And of course that was me. What you call aesthetic arrest, I call continuity. To discard it wholesale in visual form is no different than Braga's disdain for it in storytelling. And the solution is the same in both cases ... creativity.
You want gee-whiz interfaces? They give us touchscreens. How quaint! How about knobs and buttons that actually move around, almost like shapeshifting, or 3-D printing on-the-fly. Now there is a 'new' idea. They'll replace a boxy shuttle with something curvy? How quaint. How about a shuttle with a variable-geometry hull, perhaps with metal-fabric wings for flight?
These are things modern filmmaking tech puts within their reach. And it's gee-whiz wow-wee nonsense, but not a lick of it requires moving away from the established look nor is any of it necessarily anti-canonical (maybe the button thing given Kelso's console work in WNMHGB but there are ways around that).
All they're doing, instead, is making something that will be equally (if not more) dated, and in lesser time, with fewer excuses. Fifty years ago they had the Rand Corporation assisting with the future. And now, despite all the possibilities spread all over the internet of the next big future, we get a changed up retread, visually speaking, only as imaginative as the newest Hollywood art school grad.
It's rather sad, really, to waste the potential.
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posted
You tried to score points by trying to throw Shatner's post right back in his face. That's cringeworthy.
The new show will set a new canon, and their job now is to keep it consistent internally. The writing is where the real battleground will be.
Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Nim: You tried to score points by trying to throw Shatner's post right back in his face. That's cringeworthy.
I did nothing of the kind, and find your characterization rather more than cringe-worthy. I made the opposing point using his own experience as an actor and building off of that. Were he a programmer I might've referenced coding, or were he a painter I might've referenced brushstrokes. I suppose I could've referenced equestrian activity.
I reject whole-heartedly the notion that I threw anything in his face.
quote: The new show will set a new canon, and their job now is to keep it consistent internally. The writing is where the real battleground will be.
I am glad we agree it is not the same canon.
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posted
The fans who argued that The Next Generation is not and was never true Star Trek are probably laughing their asses off right now.
In the long run, most people don't want or expect new stories to be exactly the same as existing stories. That would be damn boring. How many times has a Shakespeare play been adapted for some new setting or era? How many times has Batman been rebooted?
The number of people who would be interested in a new Trek series with cardboard sets and Jolly Rancher control panels could practically be counted on one hand.
I'm waiting until the show is released before passing judgment. There's too little information , most of it is promotional fluff. This is even more inane than our reaction to the NX-01 (which although understandable was clearly overblown in retrospect).
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: The fans who argued that The Next Generation is not and was never true Star Trek are probably laughing their asses off right now.
Indeed, I've mentioned them elsewhere, as I wouldn't want to be mistaken for their ilk. Amusingly, though, I googled that Aridas guy who was on here a few years back spreading that and he is using my same argument for reconfigurable buttons (he used the term 'liquid metal' a la Terminator II, but it is the same idea).
But, he and his hangers-on were opposed to canon altogether, referring to folks like me as canonistas and decrying post-TMP Trek as the foolishness of a drug-addled Roddenberry that couldn't be allowed to contradict their fanon. I arrive from the opposite view, firmly entrenched in the canon and unwilling to have the "Prime but visually rebooted" sunshine blown up my posterior.
My whole point is simply that they should acknowledge it as a reboot and be done with it. I might still have negative views about this or that, but by trying to hook people back in with the Prime claim all they're doing is getting people worked up. I can't tell you how many insulting folks I see online trying to argue that anyone who's not 100% on board is no Trek fan and never was.
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![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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